A year of planetary observing using Binoviewers.

It has been a bit over a year since I have been binoviewing almost exclusively.

Jupiter is now disappearing from my night-time sky due to an obstruced western horizon.

I will say that for planetary observing, it has been my best year ever.

Having owned the C14 for about 4 years now, I am very famaliar with its excellent planetary performance capabilities,

In fact, I have yet to repeat a few of the observations I have made previousaly using the C14/monovision on Ganymede and Io, but conditions were simply not as good as they would have needed to be on the occasions where the detail I was looking to see was in the right position to be seen.

In almost all other cases though, I find that the binoveiwers in the C14 have offered me some of the best planetary and lunar observing I have ever done.

Not so in the EdgeHD 8". In this case, I felt like I was running out of brightness long before I had sufficient angular magnification to reach the scopes full potential.

While I am more relaxed with the binoviewers, the image gets dim enough that the maximum magnification I find myself extracting the most difficult low contrast detail is about 170x. Past this, and the dimming resulting from both the binoviewer itselg and the reduced aperture due to back focus issues with the EdgeHD 8" seems to work against me. In this scope, I feel that I am able to more consistently match the binoviewer performance in monovision when I have had occasion to test side by side.

In the C14 though, the binoviewer has indeed proven to be a valuable asset to me. Jupiter and the moon have shown details that in the past have escapted resolution even duing lone, intense monovision sessions in the past, which often left me with some eye fatige.

With the binoviewers, I simply never experience this fatigue.

I would consider the binoviwer to be a great planetary observing aid, but due to dimming, I feel that the full benefit is reserved for larger apetures where you can reach 250x and still have a high level of illumination.

I did not feel that 8" was enough aperture, and am not as happy with the binoviewers in the 8" scope as in a 14" scope.

Not saying that this is right for anyone else, only my own experience.

Over the summer, I am going to use more monovision because of the very hard true field limits imposed by a binoviwer in the scopes I own.

For myself I'd have to say the biggest plus factor is the lack of mono eye fatigue too. Total relaxation with the near total weight of my forehead into the eyecups.....only way to go. Now I'm totally relaxed and let your eyes just go..... Because my eyes show me a slight difference in their individual hues I feel this translates into a more "3D" effect. From the very get go with my unique setup of binos, filter wheel then 1.9x OCA I've grown very accustomed to magnifications of 410x, 515x, 685x and 815x. The lowest power that I can achieve with this 10" refractor is 110x minus the filter wheel and OCA with only 1/4" of infocus left! Being that I'm stuck in metro lights I've gotten used to only seeking out the more obvious M-NGC objects. Several nights ago I was amazed to see M65-M66 as large and as well at 515x in my 65° plossls. Double stars and planets pretty well keep me happy. I'm probably like you Eddgie in the fact that I never "would" want to return to mono viewing. Like for me what would be the advantage? I'm totally dependant and spoiled rotten with binos. Mike